


Growing Up We Walk on Water

by That_Ghost_Kristoff



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Codependency, F/M, Falling In Love, Robb and Jon are Twins, Sibling Incest, Swimming, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 06:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2015301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_Ghost_Kristoff/pseuds/That_Ghost_Kristoff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa can measure their lives in bodies of water.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Growing Up We Walk on Water

**Author's Note:**

> In response to an ask on tumblr. Prompt: Robb/Sansa, swimming.
> 
> I know the ages are wrong. 
> 
> Also, I know that Winterfell doesn't equal Scotland. Honestly this doesn't even take place in Scotland. I just wanted somewhere snowy, and to my knowledge (aka what I've picked up from various people I know from differing areas of Scotland, England, and Wales) Scotland's the coldest part of the island.

Sansa is eleven with a scrape on her elbow and smudge of dirt beneath her eye. September in Scottish Highlands doesn't mean real warmth, but her brother is shoulder deep in the water with his arm outstretched and a smile on his face. 

"Come on, Sansa," he says, and his eyes are the color of summertime. "It won't bite."

By the time she can catch his hand in hers, she's up to her knees. A fish brushes up against her calf. For a moment, she stays that way, but then he's pulling her towards him, holding her up by hips so she doesn't go under. "You've convinced her?" Jon says from somewhere across the lake, and Robb shouts back that he has. The water is bitingly cold, but his eyes are blue, and his mouth is smiling, so she laughs through chattering teeth.

This is the last time they'll ever go swimming in this lake. 

 

 

That October, they move to a small town outside New York City for reasons undisclosed. Arya takes up fencing, the twins "soccer," Bran some nature club called Eureka, and Sansa finds a new dance studio. This town has a local lake, too, unchecked from Labor Day to Memorial Day. It isn't long into December before the Stark children take up ice skating again. 

On Christmas, they have it to themselves. "There's a raft still frozen out there," Robb says, catching up to her and nearly tripping over his skates. "We've seen kids out in the middle. Bet we can sit on that no problem."

They race, because that's what they do, and she wins. Near the shoreline Bran and Arya are in a spinning contest, making Jon judge, and Rickon wasn't allowed to come. "Nine years of dance give you an unfair advantage," he says, wrapping a mittened hand around the ladder bar, and she lays her head on his shoulder. "I call a snowball contest later to make it up to me. Me and Jon against the rest of you."

"That's not fair either," she says, but doesn't disagree. "Are you going anywhere for New Years'?"

"Don't have any friends yet. No point," he answers. "I think it's just going to be us this time."

None of them have any friends. All their friends were back home, and this isn't home yet. Sansa's not sure she wants it to be.

For a while, they sit there in silence. Eventually Bran calls for them, the spinning competition done, and Robb kisses her hair before standing and helping her up. 

 

 

It's raining, and everyone but the two of them are holed but with a cold, so Sansa and Robb walk the three blocks it takes to reach the town's unofficial lake in the woods, dressed in clothing they don't care about. 

Robb laughs when they strip off their raincoats. "If we get caught, I'm telling our parents this was your idea."

A few days ago he turned fourteen. She's been twelve for two weeks. Even if he did blame her, he'd still be the one to get in trouble, and they both know it. "Well, we have an excuse for why we're wet," she says, and takes her brother by hand, pulling him in. Rain hits the water, forming small ripples with each landing drop. 

Her shirt's white, and outlines a body growing too early. This swim was his idea, no matter what he says, because she hasn't stepped into a bathing suit all summer. "I get upstairs shower," he says. "You can start the laundry before going in."

Even if the day isn't all that cold, her skin's still raising goosebumps, and she thinks that at least if they get sick, they have an excuse. "Yeah," she answers. "Yeah, sure."

They spend an hour in the lake with each other, swimming lazy circles in the rain. Sansa backstrokes and watches the swirl of slate grey clouds. If Robb doesn't care about what she looks like in a bathing suit, maybe she shouldn't either, she decides, and wonders how she got to be so stupid. 

 

 

Robb and Jon's birthday is spent in New Zealand where it's the end of July and snowing. Within a week, Jon's head over heels for Uncle Benjen's new neighbor's daughter Ygritte, and to Mom and Dad's deep disappointment, he's with her for most of the day. 

"This is so much better than dealing with the heat," Robb says one night's fallen and he and Sansa are alone at the riverside, lying on their backs in the snow. "When I get older, I'm moving somewhere that it's winter all year 'round."

Unlike him and Jon, she doesn't mind summer so much, and doesn't like it when they say things like that. "We're going to get buried if we're out here too long," she says instead, dodging the subject. 

Next to her, he shrugs. She feels it more than sees it. "Wish the river was frozen," is all he says. 

"Uncle Benjen says it should be in a week."

Again, Robb just shrugs. "It's not like we brought anything." Then he pauses and adds, "Thanks for coming out with me."

Though his hand is already covered in snow, she manages to find it.  Something's wrong, even though she can't figure out what, so she says, "It's fine," and gives his fingers a squeeze. 

 

 

It's early May and too early to swim, but Robb just broke up with his first girlfriend and Sansa is more pleased than she wants to admit. "She said I didn't spend enough time with her," Robb says once he's dived in. The water is cold, and he's immune to the feeling. Jeyne Poole once asked if the Starks have ice for blood, and Sansa laughed. 

"Well, you do spend an awful lot of time with Jon," she says, and doesn't add that he spends an awful lot of time with her too. The sun beats down on them, reflecting off the water, and she hopes they're not going to get sunburns this early. 

Frowning, he says, "Our school's pretty small. It's not my fault there's only one set of advanced classes per grade and he's the easiest to study with."

At thirteen, Sansa has this notion, too, that boyfriends are supposed to dote on their girlfriends, but maybe she's just spoiled. Not all families cling to each other the way theirs does. Most brothers and sisters with a two year age difference fight constantly, not take time to swim in a too cold lake together in the beginning of May to cheer each other up. When Robb was with the other Jeyne, he hadn't spent as much time with them, and Sansa'd been pretty jealous, too. 

"I guess that means you're better off without her," she says, and catches the ladder of the raft. In a month they'll be playing raft tag with the rest of the kids in town. 

First her brother climbs up, and then she follows close behind. The raft bobs at their weight, and their feet leave prints in the pollen that's collected on the surface. Its disgusting yellow color clashes with the blue of the water. "This is gross," he says, lifting his foot to inspect the pollen that caught on the bottom. "I have homeroom with her. How am I supposed to avoid her?"

Avoiding her is bad, Mom would say, so Sansa says it too. Robb just glances at her, frown on his face, and jumps back into the lake. Sansa sighs, and follows again, knowing this means the conversation is closed.

She nearly screams when they collide, and under the water their hair glows the color of fire in the midday sun. 

 

 

The summer Sansa's fifteen and Robb seventeen, Bran does a bad dive and paralyzes himself from the waist down. Tensions rise in the wake of stress, and it takes only a couple of weeks before she and her sister get into such a bad fight that Jon takes Arya to the City, and Robb drives Sansa out to the beach. 

Bodies of water, she decides as her brother pulls her into the waves. She can measure their lives in bodies of water. 

To her relief, Robb is silent as he takes her out far enough her feet don't touch the ground. It's too cold today for people to be in the ocean, and except for a few fearless kids, they have the water to themselves. Bran's never going swimming again, or skating, or climbing trees in the woods that make up their backyard. No learning how to snowboard, or going into archeology fieldwork. They're the older siblings, they should have been watching, and instead she and the twins were too busy chasing each other through the water like children right up until that scream. 

On the crowded beach, children shout and adults gossip and teenagers play Frisbee. But out here all that noise goes quiet, and as she curls her body around Robb in a wordless thanks, the whole world falls away.

 

 

For as much as they always talked about going to a university back in Scotland or England, Sansa's not surprised that Robb and Jon end up going to Cornell together. Everyone who isn't family acts like that's unhealthy, but they don't understand that the twins have been planning to go to the same school since they were eleven. "Would it be weird if I went here too?" she says on one of her visits, feet dangling in the pool. "Arya's already talking about it, too."

Robb pulls himself out of the water to sit next to her. "Honestly, all Jon and I ever talk about is you guys," he says, pushing his wet hair from his face. "Pretty sure no one we know here would think anything of it, and you know we wouldn't mind. Have you talked to Mom and Dad?"

"To Mom, yeah. She just made a joke about Cornell owing us money instead of the other way around." He laughs, and she can't help but join in, the sound echoing around room. "I've got the grades for it."

"Of course you do, you're a Stark."

Their name carries no weight, but both their parents are Cambridge alumni, and that's still some sort of legacy to maintain. Back in Scotland, whenever they visited the Baratheons in London, Joffrey would call her stupid no matter what her scores in school were. Years might have passed, but there's still a strange feeling of satisfaction that she might have a chance to prove him wrong after all.

 

 

Distance makes the heart grow fonder. Last Sansa checked, this isn't what that saying was supposed to mean. 

They've always been affectionate for siblings, even by Stark standards, but Robb comes back from Cornell with his smile that lights up the room, and more relaxed than he has been the last few times they'd seen each other. She's dating a boy named Willas who goes to NYU, but that feeling like her heart's going to burst that Jeyne's described never happens around her boyfriend. Watching Robb strip to his boxers so they can go swimming in the unofficial lake proves to her why. 

Sisters don't strip down to their bras and underwear in front of their brothers just because they don't want their parents to know what they're doing, but she does anyway. "Come on," Robb says, already in the water and holding his hand out to her. "The water doesn't bite."

No, the water doesn't bite. It's warm against her body as she lets him pull her in. She should go, she tells herself. She should start distancing herself, spend more time with Willas. Learn some boundaries. 

Unfortunately Robb is smiling, and his eyes are the color of the water, and against her better judgment, she stays. 

Oh god, she stays.

 

 

On the way back from Uncle Edmure's wedding, Mom, Dad, and her three youngest siblings were all in one car, while Sansa goes with Robb in Jon's. The separate cars save the three of their lives. The rest of their family isn't so lucky. 

"You're already ahead a semester if you want to call the school," Jon says days later, once the funeral is done. "They'll let you take a semester on hiatus if you want to come with one of us."

For the fall of their junior year, the twins are going abroad. He's going to New Zealand as an excuse to see Ygritte; Robb's doing an internship in Denmark. "I'll think about it," she answers, but her decision is already made. 

 

 

Unlike Jon, Robb's not staying in a dorm but with family, and Aunt Lyanna and Uncle Rhaegar are more than okay with letting Sansa stay too. The co-op semester doesn't take as much time as a normal one would, and they spend most of their time hopping around Europe from Robb's research. 

Sansa thinks this is what running away from home must feel like. 

In November, the North Sea is freezing even for them, and it isn't long before they end up in Italy. Their family would have loved it here, but she doesn't mentioned it and neither does he. "I broke up with Willas," she tells him finally, though it's been months. The waves rock them back and forth, and she treads instead of holding onto him. "Right before we left."

Her brother's silent for a while before he asks, "Why?"

She shrugs. "I just didn't like him the way he likes me. Trying to make time to talk with him every day after...everything sounded like more work than I'm capable of handling right now."

And Willas, sweet Willas, had been as understanding as ever. Had told her to take any amount of time she needed. "I'm sorry," Robb says, and Sansa doesn't tell him he should be, because he might have ruined relationships for her forever. 

Instead of answering, she pushes herself on her back and shuts her eyes against the sun, imagining the look on Arya's face if she ever found out. At some point her brother joins her, lacing their fingers together in the water, and even the ice in her blood can't stop her from feeling the cold of his hand. 

 

 

They're sitting on a frozen lake in Iceland, watching the Northern Lights and sharing hot chocolate and Daenerys' muffins when the girls come over. She asks the question first in Icelandic, and when they don't answer right away, says in English, "I need pictures of couples for school project. Can I?"

Somehow, Robb and Sansa managed to look more alike than Robb and Jon. They shouldn't be mistaken for a couple. But they're holding hands, and her head is on his shoulder, and at some point in the past hour their legs have crossed at the ankles, too. Though Sansa expects her brother to correct the girls, he says, "Sure," instead, and lets them take their picture. Once they're gone, he adds, "There's no point in making them hunt around for anyone else."

"I bet their teacher's going to look at that and realize we're siblings," she says. "Someone will, anyway."

"Whatever. It's not like they know us."

Green and blue lights bounce off the ice, reflecting the people around them, and the girls hit up another two who're clearly a couple. Sansa can't help but wonder if that's not the only reason he lied. 

After that, she starts paying attention. 

 

 

She kisses him in the Scottish Highlands, standing on the ice of their hometown's local lake. It's Christmas, and no one's around. Jon extended his stay for a full year, so they extended theirs until the end of winter break, but they're returning soon, and seeing Winterfell again felt like something they had to do. Kissing him hadn't originally been part of the plan. 

"Sorry," she says when she pulls away from him, finding him shocked and silent. "I don't know what—"

Then he moves, towards her instead of away, and he's the one kissing her. It only takes a moment before she's pressed back, gloved fingers twisting in his jacket as his hands bunch at the fabric of her coat at her waist. Snow falls, gathering over their bodies in blankets of cold wetness, and this is their fault. They ran away together, but running always has a destination, and this must have been theirs. 

"I thought I'd gotten it wrong," he says, leaning his forehead hers, and the movement shakes snowflakes to the ground. "This is so fucked up."

Fucked up or not, she doesn't care. She's above eighteen, they grew up inside each other's pockets, everyone but one other brother out of their family of seven is dead. "We get the apartment in Ithaca to ourselves for six months," she answers. "I think we have time to figure it out."

Maybe this will end badly, maybe it won't. But Sansa is so desperate for something good she's willing to risk it. From the way he kisses her again, she thinks he must be, too. 

**Author's Note:**

> This sort of...ran away with me. Sorry. The ending is rather abrupt and also terrible, I apologize.


End file.
